The I've Got a Handle on It Weekly Link Round-Up

I haven't said much about my leg lately, not because it's completely healed, but because I've got a handle on how to deal with it and still be able to get out and do things. This may be something I have to do the rest of my life, but as long as I can maintain an acceptable status quo and be able to get out and do the things I want to do, I can live with it. It's true that you have to play the hand of cards you're dealt, and I'm determined to at least come to a draw if I can't out-and-out win. 

This is a photo that Denis climbed the Grand Gallery stairs in the Heard Museum to take. It's a huge Navajo rug that covers a big chunk of the floor in the room.

Gorgeous, isn't it?

As big as it is, it is dwarfed by the Hubbell Rug, the world's largest Navajo rug at 26 ft. by 36 ft. I learned about the Hubbell Rug from La Posada Hotel's Facebook page. If you're on Facebook, you can check out these posts, one showing the rug only one-quarter unfolded, the other with the rug completely unfolded. It is very seldom ever displayed because it's difficult to find a place large enough.

Speaking of La Posada, it is my aim to spend at least one night there. La Posada is an old Fred Harvey House hotel built to service all the railroad passengers traveling through the United States from the 1870s through the 1950s. (Its history is fascinating.) La Posada is situated not only right by the train tracks (you can spend the night and then board the train to Chicago), but on Route 66 as well. A lot of famous people stayed there in its heyday. Denis and I wandered through both the hotel and its grounds shortly after its new owners began restoring it, and they've done so much in the ensuing years. Perhaps Denis and I can stay in the John Wayne Room, or the Howard Hughes Room, or...

Sounds as if travel plans might be in our future, but who knows what the future will bring? While I'm daydreaming, please enjoy the links!

 ►Books & Other Interesting Tidbits◄

• How social media is reinventing the book club.
• An app called Libby and the surprisingly big business of library eBooks.
• How The French Connection reinvented the police procedural.
• A marine bacteria species shows promise for curing an aggressive brain cancer. 
• What causes eye floaters?
• Inside a new effort to change what schools teach about Native American history.
• Watch (and listen) to a Scottish comedian trying to say "purple burglar alarm".
• Hilary Mantel and William Boyd warn of book industry collapse if a "disgraceful" post-Brexit change goes ahead.

 

►Channeling My Inner Indiana Jones◄

• A Byzantine church dedicated to an unknown martyr has been unearthed in Israel.
• A World War II bunker has been found inside the ruins of a Roman fort.
• These medieval Russians hid a silver hoard before the Mongol invasion.
• Aztec pictograms are the first written records of earthquakes in the Americas.
• Transylvanian skeletons have been found with urns from the afterlife on their heads.
• How one of Van Gogh's olive tree paintings got restored for a special exhibition.
• Rare Impressionist landscapes found in a storage unit could sell for $60,000.
• The gun that killed Billy the Kid sells for $6 million.

 

►Channeling My Inner Elly Mae Clampett◄

• Dolphins alerted a rescue crew to a swimmer who'd been stranded for twelve hours.
• Scientists have identified seven species of spotted skunks, and they all do handstands before they spray.
• The adorable lives of splendid fairywrens.
• Female octopuses throw things at male harassers. (Good for them!)
• Pepper, a K-9 officer fresh out of training, finds a missing child in just five minutes.
• Watch a video of an Anatolian guard dog protecting both livestock and predators.
• This compassionate man uses a drone equipped with a thermal camera to find and rescue animals in disaster areas.
• This dog panics when he can't see Dad and jumps fearlessly into the ocean to find him.

 

►The Wanderer◄

• The luxury hotels that gave succor to the Queens of Golden Age crime fiction.
• America's twenty least-visited national parks.
• One of the world's most beautiful castles is also a school for wizards.
• Writers' rooms: Virginia Woolf.
• Starting next summer, day-trippers will have to pay to enter Venice.
• Track the hidden histories in the street names of Washington, DC.
• This remote Scottish school offers a big salary to teach three students.

 

►Fascinating Folk◄

• William Kent Krueger on the storyteller's promise.
• Meet Tony Parker, the man who turned oral histories into an art form.

 

►I ♥ Lists◄

• Ten mysteries with indomitable female sleuths.
• Author Picks: My six favorite opening lines of literature.
• Every bookish movie coming to Netflix in Fall 2021.
• Thirty-five outlawed baby names from around the world.
• Eight books to read if you love The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.
• In these crime novels, the city is as much a character as a backdrop.
• Seven thrillers about the dark side of academia.
• Eight books by and about Afghan women.

That's all for this week! Don't forget to stop by next Friday when I'll be sharing a freshly selected batch of links for your surfing pleasure.

Stay safe. Stay healthy. And don't forget to curl up with a good book!